Coaches in a highly regarded semiprofessional soccer league were told to prep their players for high-pressure penalty kicks with one of two statements: \u201cYou are going to shoot five penalties.\u00a0 Your aspiration is to score at least three times.\u201d\u00a0 Or \u201cYou are going to shoot five penalties.\u00a0 Your obligation is to not miss more than twice.\u201d\u00a0 You probably wouldn\u2019t expect a small change in wording to affect these practiced, highly motivated players.\u00a0 But it had a big impact.\u00a0 Players did significantly better when the instructions were framed to match their dominant motivational focus, which the researchers had previously measured.\u00a0 This was especially true for prevention-minded players, who scored nearly twice as often when they received the don\u2019t-miss instructions.<\/p>\n
In another study that used framing, students were assigned to write a report, for which they would be paid, and deliver it by a certain date.\u00a0 They were asked to make a specific plan, detailing when, where, and how they would write the report.<\/p>\n
One version of the instructions was designed to fit a promotion focus: imagine a convenient time when you will be able to write your report.\u00a0 Imagine a comfortable, quiet place where you might write your report.\u00a0 Imagine yourself capturing as many details as you can and making your report vivid and interesting.<\/p>\n
The other version was designed to fit a prevention focus: imagine times that will be inconvenient for writing your report so that you can avoid them.\u00a0 Imagine places that will be uncomfortable or have lots of distraction so that you can avoid writing your report there.\u00a0 Imagine yourself not forgetting any details and being careful not to make your report bland or boring.<\/p>\n
Remarkably, students who received instructions suited to their dominant motivational focus were about 50% more likely than others to turn in their reports.\u00a0 So when you are trying to keep yourself or someone else motivated, remember that promotion-focused people need to think about what they are doing in terms of positives (what they aspire to, how best to accomplish the task) and prevention-focused people should instead think about negatives (potential mistakes, obstacles to avoid).<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Once goals are set in a way that creates motivational fit, sustain the fit by seeking out\u2014or, as a manager, giving\u2014the right kind of feedback.\u00a0 Promotion-focused people tend to increase their efforts when a supervisor offers them praise for excellent work, whereas prevention-focused people are more responsive to criticism and the looming possibility of failure.\u00a0 For instance, in one study we found that the promotion-focused were more motivated and tried harder in the midst of a task when they were assured that they were on target to reach a goal as opposed to when they were told that they were below target but could catch up.\u00a0 For prevention-focused people the reverse was true: they tried harder when told they weren\u2019t on target; in fact, being assured of success undermined their motivation.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n With acknowledgement to the work of Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. and Jonathan Halvorson, Ph.D<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes even minor tweaks in how you think about a goal or the language you use to describe it can…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-823","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seehear.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seehear.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seehear.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seehear.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seehear.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=823"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/seehear.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1979,"href":"https:\/\/seehear.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/823\/revisions\/1979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seehear.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}